Presidential candidates President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden faced few questions on foreign policy during this year’s debates. Not surprising given that Americans remain consumed by the domestic catastrophe brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, a reeling economy, reckoning over race and inequity, and climate-related disasters like wildfires in the West. But the two men’s very divergent views will undoubtedly guide the trajectory of U.S. authority and standing in the world over the next four years.  Harvard scholars and analysts on U.S. intelligence, Russia, China, Europe, the Middle East, and nuclear threats posed by North Korea and Iran look at where we are now and consider how the election results could alter current U.S. priorities, relationships, and power dynamics.

Over the past few years, China’s rise has become a top priority in Washington and in many European capitals—and a big-ticket item on the wider transatlantic agenda. However, the United States and Europe have so far not been able to capitalize on this convergence by building anything resembling a coherent agenda to address jointly shared challenges from China. This task will be among the most pressing on the transatlantic agenda over the next four years. 

Even before the outbreak of the pandemic, the transatlantic community faced enormous domestic and geopolitical challenges. The pandemic reinforces these tendencies and at the same time makes it clear why cooperation will remain essential in the future.

Four experts on both sides of the Atlantic give their perspectives on whether the pandemic has changed national understandings, narratives, and foreign policy debates on China.

The coronavirus pandemic is laying bare a growing competition between democratic and authoritarian governments. As the U.S. and Europe struggle to contain the virus at home, Russia and China are seizing the moment to enhance their international influence through information operations. Moscow and Beijing have long aimed to weaken the United States, blunt the appeal of democratic institutions, and sow divisions across the West. Their goals in this crisis are no different.

Members of the Transatlantic Strategy Group in Harvard Kennedy School's Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship and the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) tell us how they see the COVID-19 pandemic affecting the U.S.-Europe relationship. Their answers highlight implications for a range of issues — trade, health, security, governance, Brexit, climate change and China — and what actions can be taken to enhance transatlantic cooperation in this moment of crisis.

A discussion with Dr. Michael Carpenter, Managing Director of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, Nicholas Burns, Faculty Chair of the Project on Europe, and  Torrey Taussig, Research Director in the Project on Europe, on how the U.S. can work with European partners to develop a new approach toward Russia.

Europe’s momentum in developing a clear-eyed approach toward China has stalled. In March 2019, the European Commission issued a white paper naming China a systemic rival and economic competitor. That publication marked a fundamental shift in how far European institutions were willing to go in raising the challenges China poses to Europe’s openness and prosperity.

Europe is at the center of two defining trends in international politics today: renewed great power competition and the resurgence of global authoritarianism. Migration, the rise of extreme nationalism, Brexit, and fractured ties with the United States all increasingly make European countries more vulnerable to Russian and Chinese authoritarian influence—a spectrum of overt and covert activities that range from benign state tools such as public diplomacy to more malevolent efforts including direct interference in electoral processes—that presents a growing set of challenges to European cohesion and stability.

Thorsten Benner and Torrey Taussig spoke with the Berlin Pulse about the EU's role in US-China competition.